


The Price of War

by deb-indycar-fan (debirlfan)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character's body slowly becomes part of a spaceship, Gen, In-universe nonfiction documentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-05 21:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20279995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debirlfan/pseuds/deb-indycar-fan
Summary: Be careful what you sign up for.





	The Price of War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).

If you're reading this, it means that I managed to get my story to the media, and that someone had the balls to print it. I'm not sure that either of those things will happen, but I believe that it's a story that needs to be told. I walked into...this...blindly. I don't want that to happen to anyone else.

Let me start at the beginning. I grew up on Mars, living in one of the domed cities. I won't be more specific that that. If you read this to the end, I'm sure you'll understand why I don't want to leave too many clues to my identity. At any rate, growing up, my intentions were to go into bio-engineering.

Everything changed that day in 2123, when the little green men attacked the Proxima colony. One hour long battle that not only proved that mankind wasn't alone in the universe, but which showed that the aliens were hostile, and that we were seriously outgunned.

I imagine a lot of you are too young to remember it in any detail, or to remember the ensuing panic. The expectation was that at any moment, the aliens would show up at Sol's door. 

I was...in my teens. I did a lot of what my generation did, and immediately enlisted in the hastily formed Interplanetary Defense Force. 

Then, as now, the IDF put all of its recruits through a battery of tests. Intelligence, aptitude, physical. Assignments were made on the basis of those tests. A certain number of recruits were pulled out. What the screening board called, “The best and the brightest,” although I have since learned that the criteria was actually far more complex than that. At any rate, I was one of those chosen.

We were offered the stars. Literally. New, experimental starships that were ten times faster and more powerful than anything Earth had ever produced before, starships that could take the fight to our new enemy. The “catch” was that to fly them, we would need to have chips implanted into our brains. Chips that would allow us to interface with our ships, and become part of them.

We were young, impressionable, and stupid. Most of us jumped at the chance, without asking questions or ever really considering just what that meant. 

It didn't really sink in during training. There was the heady rush of jumping to hyperspace, the tickle of the solar wind against the skin of the ship, a tickle that felt as if it were against your own skin. We should have realized. I should have realized.

It wasn't until they sent us off to war, until we engaged with the LGM, that any of us learned the dark side of connecting with our starships. The link that made us a part of our ships also made them a part of us. Damage to the ship was damage it its pilot. Every scrape, every gash, every burn felt as if it was to our physical body. A shot that effectively killed the ship would kill its pilot, even if the cockpit was never breached.

The vast majority of that initial batch of “best and brightest” recruits didn't survive the war. Those of us who did were hailed as heroes. We were promised an early and luxurious retirement. 

Except it didn't turn out that way. The chips couldn't be removed. We had all become such an integral part of our ships that even being away from them for just a few hours was more than any of us could stand.

The IDF doesn't want that known. They don't want the next generation of recruits to know what lies in wait for them. We've been sent away into deep space to eventually die with our ships, and they've done everything possible to cut our lines of communication.

Since you're reading this, apparently they didn't quite manage to cut them all. 

If you're thinking of joining the IDF, take this as a warning. I wish someone had been there to warn me.


End file.
